An Hour Long Conversation with Marvel's Kaare Andrews

Last week I reached out to Kaare Andrews on Twitter and we had an hour long talk about everything Iron Fist. We talked about the first issue, Kaare's introduction into comics, his break in to the industry, the key differences between comics and films, his favorite game, his favorite movie, and a Batman story he pitched to DC that never got past approval. This is the full transcript of our conversation. The abridged interview can be found on Riddickulous Rants.

What was your first exposure to the Iron Fist character?

The first exposure was probably some crazy Marvel superheroes ad when I was a kid and it was probably the John Byrne version of him back in the day. I have vivid memories of just, the costume. Y’know, the green tights, the yellow collar, and the yellow mask, and the slippers. I have very firm memories of just thinking ‘What a crazy costume!’ And then professionally when Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and David Aja were doing the book, one of my editors at the time, Warren Simmons, asked me to help out with some covers. I think David had fallen behind on some interiors or they didn’t want him to fall behind… one of those three, and so they wanted us to take him off covers for a couple months until he caught up. And so I came in and did maybe 4 or 5 covers. That was the first time I worked with him professionally. I’ve always been a big martial arts fan so I’ve always been aware of him but I didn’t really read him ever until I started doing the covers, and that’s when I kind of got into that series, that arc, The Fraction/Brubaker/Aja arc. And then you know later the Foreman and Swiercyznski was really cool. I really liked it, it was a great character.

Yeah, I mean, at the time that was such a fun different book and not at all like… the last Iron Fist series I can remember was, like, late 90’s, it was a three-parter, nothing major, and then that book came out and just sort of blew the door off the hinges in terms of presentation.

Yeah, it seemed like, y’know, like it did come across as elevated, especially for its time, and I know there’s been some other Iron Fist escapades that were maybe a little more… I dunno, a little more poppy or anime-esque or video game-esque, but I really enjoyed that Immortal run. I wanted to do something at Marvel, I was just coming back from a little indie-horror movie that I spent a year making, and I came back and I wanted to write something. I realized I hadn’t written a full, big story in a long time. I’d been writing little things like A+X or AvX but most of my writing was focused on screenplays for the last few years, and it’s a totally different medium. Writing screenplays for so many years, you just start to appreciate that comic books get MADE. Screenplays don’t. The average journey from script to screen is seven years, and that’s just the movies that get made, let alone the 99% that don’t get made at all. You start to feel very frustrated creatively as a writer. Nothing is really finished until it’s birthed. You have to birth something to present it to an audience. It can’t just exist on your hard drive or be read by a couple people. It needs to be just kind of out there. I was just excited to write something again. Especially after the A+X/AvX issues, I just had a lot of fun with those. It had been so long since Spider-man Reign I had forgotten how long. I was talking to Axel [Alonso, Marvel’s EIC], and I was like “I really want to write something!”. I can’t remember how many, but they had a few different projects they were thinking about doing something with, and Iron Fist was one of them. I was familiar with him because of the covers. But to be honest I still didn’t really know the character. I didn’t understand who he was besides this kind of cool storyline that I read. And it seemed like The Immortal Iron Fist spent so much time expanding his powers and expanding the legacy of the Iron Fist and that whole lineage of Iron Fists; I still didn’t really know who the character was, really. So, I said “Ok, Axel, I think Iron Fist sounds really cool, lemme just get to the know the character, and I’ll get back to you and see if I have any ideas”. I went back to one of the first issues, which is where I always go, back to the source, and I was just amazed. That origin of that character is… unique. It’s amazing. And instantly I was inspired and I had so many ideas. It was the very first, initial storyline that made everything click.

You talked about how it’s really difficult working as a screenwriter because, yeah, you finish a script, but it’s not really what you intended it to be until it’s on celluloid or on digital. That’s one thing I really appreciated about this first issue, it’s something that can only really be done in a comic book. The way you frame certain sequences within words or sound effects or what have you, and the way you bled foreground into the background to make a giant seamless collage basically of a moment, of an action, that’s something you can’t really do in any other medium.

I think the language of comic books is very specific and it’s related to the language of film, and prose, and illustration, and fine art, but it is into itself a unique medium. I’ve been reading comics since my earliest memories as a child. Before I could even read words. We always had comics, like on road trips, we’d get comic books as treats all the time. I’ve always had them in my life, so, I like to think I know the language. I’ve always really admired artists that pushed that language like [Jim] Steranko or Walter Simonson.

Yeah, you mentioned Steranko in the afterword for the first issue.

Totally. Y’know, he was one of the first guys who I ever knew the name of for comic book creators. It was just the right time, when I was a young mind and getting into comic books. Comic book stores were a new thing and I found this old issue in a store, and it was an old issue but it was in great condition. It cost more money than I maybe even had for my allowance but somehow I was able to buy it. Maybe I convinced my parents to help me out. It wasn’t even that expensive, y’know, but for a kid it was… And it blew my mind. The way he integrated art, and writing, and he even colored his own stuff, which was really unique in the 60’s. Fairly unheard of was inking your own stuff let alone coloring, and writing now too. And because he did all those different parts the whole experience felt different. And for the first time in my life I was like “Oh, this is a unique thing, and this is a unique guy, and this is a unique story and maybe it’s because he did all of these things”. I’ve always been inspired by him and his work and the work of other guys like Frank Miller, or John Byrne, or Mike Mignola, or any guys that embrace the medium as a whole, as a totality, and not just one aspect of the medium.

Definitely. It gives you more ‘mastery’, it lets you tell the exact story you wanna tell instead of just hoping you can explain it well enough to someone who can realize it. That’s awesome, and that’s unique, and that’s hard to find in the industry.

That’s exactly the process the writer has to go through. He has to explain the story for someone else to draw, and then hope his words fit, and if they don’t then tweak the words. I think sometimes you can have these unique wonderful accidents from artists and writers that you’d never have if they were the same person but I also believe that the kind of comics that one man can create could never replicate that with a team. Like, Batman Eternal that’s coming out. I don’t know how many writers, how many artists, on a weekly book and it’s like… why. I understand you wanna sell some books, and that’s your biggest character so why not, but, you can’t make The Dark Knight Returns with even one writer and four different artists. It’s a different thing. It’s a different machine. I think the industry has kind of forgotten those lessons. It’s strange to me that there are no more writer-artists out there. When I was growing up they were the cool kids on the block, y’know, the kings.

Yeah, I mean, you think about how informative something like Frank Miller’s Daredevil run was and how that shaped a whole generation of storytellers.

Totally. For sure. One hundred percent. And John Byrne as well, and, y’know, Will Eisner… all these guys that have changed the medium, in my mind, in my opinion, most of them have been writer-artists. Of course there’s always Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, there’s always teams, but the guys, for me, that really pushed the boundaries, and the language, and the possibilities of the medium, as a whole, are always the writer-artists. I think it’s because it’s hard to change things and do things differently when you’re a part of a team, y’know? When you’re just the guy who bakes the bread it’s hard for you to be the guy who influences…..

How the sandwich will taste?

Exactly! You have to have a conversation with the deli guy, with the meat guy, and maybe, y’know, the owner of the deli wants to toast the sandwich, and how is it gonna get seasoned, and ‘oh, I hope that happens right’… There’s so much negotiating and compromising and politics. When you’re part of the machine it’s just a part of the process. But when you make that whole sandwich from scratch it can be whatever you want it to be, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore! You don’t have to worry about explaining so correctly that someone will hopefully draw something you intended. You just can do it. It’s freeing and liberating and the that’s where the medium really gets pushed. Or, that’s the quickest way for the medium to get pushed.

I totally see where you’re coming from but at the same time, you’ve had a pretty lucky career in terms of comic books. You’ve gotten to work with some of the most prolific and famous contemporary writers. You worked with Warren Ellis [On X-Men: Xenogenesis] and Mark Millar [Ultimate X-Men], how has that approach influenced the way you decide to tell a story?

Here’s what happened. As soon as I broke into comic books, I broke in as a penciller. It’s funny because you have to break into comics as one thing; you break in as a writer-artist, inker-colorist, writer-colorist, you have to break in as one thing. That’s just kinda how the world knows how to work. As soon as I broke in as a penciller I immediately pushed to be a writer. I started writing within that first year that I broke in and I wrote two comics. I wrote a Spider-man Mangaverse, and I also wrote an issue of Tangled Web, the Spider-man anthology. Totally, totally different styles, and the Mangaverse thing was manga influenced, which I’ve always loved along with anime so that was very natural for me. The Tangled Web stuff was very much more painted, photo-realistic, and again, I’ve always loved that stuff too, but those are the two extremes of my art styles.

As soon as I broke in as a writer, the pressure was off, and then I could really enjoy teaming up with Zeb Wells or Mark Millar or Warren Ellis because once you’ve gotten permission to write, you don’t have to worry about it anymore, you don’t have to be the frustrated penciller who wishes he could write someday if only someone would let him. It’s like, there’s no more permission, so, now I could write. Or I could take this opportunity to work with one of these awesome writers like Warren Ellis. Who wouldn’t want to work with Warren Ellis? Or Mark Millar? I think some of my best work has been with Millar, Wells, Ellis, these guys are great writers, and I would love to work with them again on another project. Having said that, right now, I’m really enjoying the writer-artist thing because, again, it’s just a different approach. I don’t have to worry about interpreting someone’s script. I can just do it. I can just write it.

But there is another part of my brain that actually really does like interpreting a script. When I’m given one. I always look for the subtext, what’s behind the words, kind of like how an actor analyzes a script. So, they would write one panel, and I’ll always draw that panel the way they wrote it but I’ll look for the subtext and I’ll draw that too, what’s underneath and draw that too. It’s fun to investigate and do that thing, and I’m sure I’ll be drawing someone else’s story again in the future, but for now it’s more rewarding at this very moment to be working on my very own thing.

It sounds like… So, I’m a huge video game fan, right? And so on the original Nintendo everyone making a soundtrack had to use the same series of sounds;

haha, right.

And so on one hand it sounds awfully daunting and constricting but at the same time, that forced creativity. Do you find being in total control in both the story in terms of where the plot is going and how you show the action that’s going on, do you find the creative freedom terrifying? Or is it liberating and exciting?

Oh, no, it’s amazing. Totally awesome. I always find that whenever I draw comic books the most terrifying thing is always “how am I going to draw this… thing.” And that can be whether I’m writing it, or just drawing it, or whatever. That’s always the biggest question; what this thing will look like visually. Because there are so many different ways you can draw something and those different ways are immediately recognized. I could write something ten different ways but it’ll take time, and it won’t always be so apparent, you don’t have to read the whole issue and it’ll feel a little different and maybe it’ll be in first person, maybe there will be no words, and there are a lot of different styles you could use, but the art is so immediate. It’s so instantaneous. You can see someone’s art-style in one panel and that’s going to represent the whole project. So, I always give myself a brain aneurism when I try to figure out how I’m going to draw the next thing. I like to change it up every time. I’m kind of bored if I don’t do it. That happens regardless.

What you said is interesting, the constraints. I think comic books have enough constraints, and I think those constraints make it more enjoyable. You can only fit, maybe, nine panels in a page if you’re pushing it. So, you have one-to-nine panels per page and right now you only have 20 pages per book, and only five-to-seven books per arc or per trade and maybe you can you can do two arcs, which is what I’m doing. I’m doing a twelve issue story. I find there are so many constraints in comic books but I like that myself. I like to bounce: how can I jam these different approaches into one thing? It’s like a haiku. How can I budget my syllables to fit that haiku? And I feel the same way with comic books, and every time I write an issue or draw an issue it’s always, like, panel management time. How many panels I can fit per page and in a way where I can keep my page turns exciting, and then the second page turns even more exciting and get to the end of a story that makes you want to find out what happens in the next issue. I love those constraints, it’s part of the medium, it’s awesome.

It’s interesting to me that this whole thing started because I reached out to on twitter because I really enjoyed enjoyed the first issue of Iron Fist and I couldn’t find any information on it. I immediately assumed it was a limited series because of what you did with Spider-man Reign. I couldn’t find any concrete information and I thought “oh, I have twitter I assume he has, let me just reach out and maybe he’ll shoot me back an answer”, and you said it was an ongoing. What about an ongoing was exciting to you?

Well, I’ve never actually done an ongoing —

I know! That’s why I asked, man, it’s so exciting! Xenogenesis was a six issue series, you did some work on Ghost Boxes which I want to say was two issues, correct?

It was! I think I was on for one issue, or half an issue

Oh, that’s right, and Simone Bianchi was the other half!

Right.

And then you had a little two issue stint on Ultimate X-Men. I’ve always thought of you as a shorter-form storyteller, so, what about an ongoing drew you in? What got you hooked?

I think it was the fact that I had never done one before. I’d always planned on doing… I’ve approached the comic book story very methodically and broke down “How do I break in? What do I want to do after I break in? What are my milestones?” And then along the way, your own life and your own processes take over. So, for me, I started doing film stuff when I started doing comic books concurrently, so, my comic book life has been kind of… It’s had to share with my film life for the past, um, seven years or something like that. And that’s always kind of prevented me from taking the next step. When I do a movie I have to take a year off comic books. And even before then, I’m probably still developing movies and things that take up time. I kind of lost focused a little bit… well, maybe not lost focused, but my film career is finally starting to happen, in a way. It’s still behind my comic career, which is probably a decade ahead of my film career, my work in film is pretty new, but I’m finally a working director.

That’s right, congratulations on the ABC’s of Death.

Thank you! But it just takes time, it takes work and I haven’t had the time. When I came back from this last movie I was really feeling like I missed comic books a lot. I thought it was just a great time to do the ongoing, the thing ‘I was always going to do’ and I should do it RIGHT NOW, when I can. And, y’know, 12 issues is like… that’s my storyline. It’s divided into two, six issue arcs and we look at that as kind of season one, and much like a TV show, we’re not really talking about season two until we get closer. And if the book gets “renewed”, if the audience is interested, if editorial is still interested, but it is planned as an ongoing, so, we’ll see how this first issue goes. I already know how I would do things in season two, so it’s interesting to work towards such a larger goal for the first time. Everything else has been so contained; 6 issues, 4 issues, 2 issues, um, half an issue. It’s really fun to draw towards this larger storyline.

Yeah, considering the character has had a lot of exposure recently due to crossover events and team books, and that groundbreaking ongoing in the mid 2000’s [The aforementioned Brubaker/Fraction/Aja run], this is going to be a huge stamp on the character, so, it’s got to be exciting to contribute something very noticeable to the Iron Fist mythos.

Yeah, well, I always think that with every project. Again, with all my favorite guys, every time they were given a project, they really grabbed their hand around that thing, whatever it was and they mad it their own. So, you look at McFarlane, when he was doing Spider-man back in the day. He really took hold of that character. And anytime a guest hero or a guest villain showed up it was exciting because it was like “Ok, how’s he going to handle Captain America or any other guy”. Same with Mignola. How’s Mignola going to handle Spider-man? How’s he going to handle Superman, Batman? I always think my favorite characters have big footprints and push things around and make you notice them and what they’re doing. I guess it’s like any great artist needs to leave a mark. I’ve always tried to do that myself and again it’s easier when you’re writing/drawing the book yourself. You can leave that mark yourself. It doesn’t just have to be a visual thing or a style thing. It can be a thing that’s like in totality.

So, with Iron Fist, there are just things I wanted to do… That origin. Have you ever read that origin of Iron Fist, Marvel Premiere number 15?

Actually, I have not, no.

Do you know about it at all?

I know the broad strokes, but again, it’s only stuff that’s ever been hinted at. But, please, take it away.

Let me just blow your mind right now. Do I have permission? To blow your mind?

My socks are already off, so, there won’t be a mess, please go ahead.

Iron Fist, in the past few years has been this kind of jokey character who lives in this billionaire penthouse and trains underprivileged kung-fu kids and, y’know, it’s like… He’s kind of a light character. He’s kind of become this goofy, billionaire — I say he’s like Batman without a plan. I didn’t really connect with latest iteration of Iron Fist for many reasons but most of it was I just couldn’t relate to that guy, y’know? I’m not that happy. I don’t understand why a billionaire superhero would feel like opening a kung-fu school for underprivileged kids, a handful of kids, was a way to make the world a better place. It just seemed so myopic!

I mean, when you say it like that…

It was SO underwhelming; he’s a billionare SUPERHERO, who could change the world and he’s like “i’m gonna teach six kids kung-fu”. Really? That’s part of the reason I had to go back to the first issues. I didn’t understand the motivation behind a character doing. As soon as you go back to the first issue, and please, pick it up, it’s like… It’s literally the darkest superhero origin story I have ever heard.

This nine year old boy is taken into the Himalayas by his father, his mother, and his father’s business partner. Alone. No sherpas, no guides are with them. They’re alone, they’re facing death in the cold, and they’re all kind of happy about it. And then a series of events happen where his father kind of falls to his death slash-is-pushed, and this kind of spoiler alert for a 40 year old story from the 70’s, so, I’m not going to hold back. So, his father falls slash-gets-thrown by his business partner who immediately tells Danny’s mother that he wants to take care of them and have them in his family. And then they throw rocks at him and say “No, we’d rather die. You just killed my husband and we would rather die!” And so he leaves them to die. And then they crawl out of their little crevasse and then Danny, after watching his father plunge off a cliff, watches his mother run down and throw herself into a pack of wolves so Danny can run away to this little wooden bridge. So he watches his mother get torn apart in front of him by wolves into a bloody, goopy mess —

Jesus.

He himself is saved at the last minute by these secret monks from this magical, Shangri-La fantasy land, and they take him and… he’s not like Batman. Batman is this young kid who watches his parents get murdered and then dedicates his life to fighting the idea of crime. The whole thing becomes this thematic statement. He takes on this notion of crime as a symbol. He’s going to fight fear with fear. Or Spider-man who watches his uncle Ben die and it’s his fault and so he decides “With great power comes great responsibility” and he’s going to do the right thing… these are both kind of noble guys who make noble choices when given their moments of origin. But not Iron Fist.

They take him into this place and they train him for ten years, not to make the world a better place, not to fight crime, but to kill one man. Ten years, so he can go back to Earth, hunt down this businessman, and kill that motherfucker! And then he does! He trains ten years, he defeats this mystical dragon, he goes through all these trials and tribulations with the singular purpose of murdering one man. And then at the last moment, after ten years, the monks say “Danny, listen, if you abandon this quest for vengeance, you can stay with us forever as an immortal in our city and live as a god in heaven.” And he’s like “Nuh-uh — I’m going back to Earth, and I’m going to kill that guy. I’m going to murder him with my kung-fu hands, my iron fists”, and he turns them down! And he finally finds this guy and there’s two things that stop him from doing it. One, the guy is already a paraplegic, he’s been metaphorically dead for ten years, waiting for Danny to kill him. He knows Danny is going to kill him. He’s been waiting. And Two, right at that moment he’s like “Ahh, it’s not going to be as satisfying as I thought it would be”, a ninja, the character’s actual name is “The Ninja”, comes and kills him instead. It’s like… that is the DARKEST superhero I’ve ever heard!

That is so fucking 70’s, man! Are you kidding me??

But can you think of any other superhero that spent ten years training to murder a man and even as an adult made that choice. That’s just crazy.

Honestly, I just assumed the character was introduced in, like, an eight page story, and you read that, and you were just expanding upon the mythos, but your first issue then is supremely faithful to Iron Fist as a character.

I guess I’m kind of showing those origin stories through my own lens. Because it was written in kind of this quirky, weird way, that was this cute, 70’s thing. And then lately he’s been this jokey character I didn’t understand. Living in that mansion and helping kung-fu kids without a real plan, and I thought ‘this is crazy’! How can one man be both things? How can he watch his mother torn apart by wolves, train ten years to kill a guy until that’s taken away from him by someone else, and also be this same guy who’s joking around in his penthouse training kids.

The most interesting part of the story for me is, I’m going to say they both happened. And they’re both real. And they both matter. And I’m not going to choose one over the other. So, if you combine those two things it’s very yin and yang. And then it becomes a very interesting story device. Then I can go back and show that origin and fill in the holes. Why would this business partner, after murdering the father be like “yeah, man, now let’s go hook up and start a family of our own”, like, what could fuel that conversation? And it’s been fun to make that make sense, that’s where I’m having the most fun, analyzing the characters and taking that crazy origin story and that cooky way he ended up and making it all make sense.

Can we talk about the first issue? [editor’s note: spoilers ahead]

Yeah!

Dude, it’s really fucking dark. Like, red skies the entire time. For the past couple years he’s really just been a supporting character, not quite Spider-man’s level of comic relief, but he’s been funnier than a lot of heroes lately. And he’s always brightly garbed. This issue has apocalyptic red skies, Danny is an emotionally vacant nihilist, and he doesn’t put the costume on once. It was a huge departure from every portrayal of Iron Fist we’ve seen in the past couple years.

Yeah, and I was so excited to do it.

It was fucking awesome, man! Are you kidding!?

My own natural tastes gravitate towards really dark material like that. That stuff is kind of what I enjoy.

I’ve read [Spider-man] Reign; I understand.

Right? Totally. If you’ve read Reign, it’s not gonna be such a big leap.

You’re not subtle about it.

Again, why I gravitated towards this character was because his origin was so dark, and it was like, “Oh, this is totally what I do and want to do, this gets me excited!” The first issue… I didn’t intentionally make it dark and nihilistic and Nietzschean or whatever, that’s just my taste. I filtered it through my processes and that’s what I came out with. I still think there’s some funny stuff in there.

For sure! It was nice just seeing a superhero be like “Man, I’ve got nothing else to do tonight, I might as well get laid since I can.” I know that sounds bad but if you’re a billionaire superhero… Yeah, I can see that. That’s not a huge leap in terms of character.

Yeah, and not just that, you are literally a caucasian male, billionaire superhero, living in one of the biggest cities in the world. Like… how much more privileged could one person get? Who else would you be to have more of a life of privilege than Danny Rand. And what was he doing with it? Again, he was teaching a handful of kids kung-fu and popping up here and there. I just thought ‘this guy is lost’.

My parents are both counselors, and this is probably part of the reason I love this stuff, but, the whole purpose of talk therapy is talk about all these repressed feelings and emotions that you’ve had. Maybe there’s been something traumatic in your life as a child or an adult or whatever but, if you don’t deal with this stuff, they’ll find a way to deal with you. And generally that happens through addiction or depression or abuse, but not dealing with your problems creates more problems. And this is literally a manifestation of that exact idea; I don’t think Danny has dealt with this dark past. I certainly haven’t seen him deal with it in a very long time. So my whole take on it is that past is going to come back and deal with him.

He made a very specific choice. He trained ten years to kill someone and at the last minute he was given a way out from a life of darkness. And he chose death over life. He didn’t choose to become an enlightened monk living in K’un L’un, and he chose to go back to Earth and kill a man. And that’s a big choice with a big consequence but I haven’t seen anything. There should be big consequences, I should say, but I haven’t seen any. And my story is going to show you the consequences of when you choose death of another person over the very idea of life.

It’s super interesting to me because so many superheroes, I guess more on the DC side, are shaped by their environment. Batman is synonymous with Gotham, which is often referred to as a character in story, and you can’t have a Batman story without Gotham. Superman is idealistic and Metropolis is the beacon for human potential in terms of civilization. Danny was shaped by K’un L’un but then immediately left. As soon as he was done he walked away. We’ve seen glimpses of it in the Brubaker/Fraction/Aja series, and recently in Avengers Vs. X-Men, they hide out in K’un L’un for a little bit it just becomes a geographical place at that point, it doesn’t really become anything deeper.

When we first see Danny in your series he’s in this completely terrifying version of New York. I don’t know if it’s just the way he sees New York or if that’s some Marvel thing that’s going on, but, it doesn’t look like a friendly place. It looks like the skies in Crisis on infinite Earths, which is right before the world is going to end. And you’ve immediately taken him out of that environment and back to where he was shaped.

Again, I think thematically he was offered to stay in heaven and he chose to go to hell. So we open in kind of a hell on Earth, in the bowels of the city.

Yeah, the skies are burning.

Hahaha, yeah.

And I love that you address that halfway through the issue. Danny realizes the sky is on fire and it’s like “Dude, it’s been on fire the entire time!”

Hahahahaha

And sure, a helicopter was blowing up, so, I guess that’s a nice literary device to say that but it’s like, “Fuck, Danny, open your eyes, man!”

That’s the cool thing about when you write and draw the story. You can say many things just visually that maybe if you just said them with words they’d be interesting but they wouldn’t be as impactful. Or if you just said them with art they’d interesting but not as impactful. But when I can say it with the words, the pencils, the inks, and the colors, being able to color your own stuff is a luxury, but also… we recognize colors, as animals, we recognize the color red before we recognize shapes. It’s so instinctual for our species to see a color as danger, aggression, whatever. And to hand those chores off to someone else… I’m just so glad for the time being. That’ll be the first thing to go if I get behind. It gives me a lot of control over the entire process. Being able to see all those tools to tell parts of the story is a very good thing.

Sorry, I just realized we didn’t really address what I brought up — is Danny one of those characters? Is he that shaped by K’un L’un? It seems like he just sort of, and even according to your interpretation of the character, swatted that hand away. Now we’re immediately going back to K’un L’un.

Totally. These are people that took him in and saved his life at ten years old. People became father figures to him, brothers to him, a family to him, and the first chance he gets, he leaves them. He was offered a seat at the table and left. The first time Earth comes back into the ten year cycle [editor’s note: K’un L’un is only accessible once every ten years] he takes that door and walks out. All these choices, there are consequences to. You will see the consequence of that choice as well. These are big things.

Here’s the thing I have to say though. Part of the defining thing about Danny is that he’s a man caught between two worlds. He came from the privileged western world, he was saved and protected and raised in the mystical world of the east, and then he returned. So he returned as an orphan with no family. Since then, he’s not really of our world anymore, because he spent his formative years training in a mystical paradise, and he’s not really from K’un L’un either. He’s an outsider, taken in as one of their own. He doesn’t really have a place in the world. He’s caught between two. I know there’s been a bit of a campaign on the internet that says “Let’s make Iron Fist Asian, we need Asian superheroes”, and “We’re so sick of the caucasian savior.”

That was the next thing I was going to bring up.

I think those are misplaced. I think it’s more of a close-minded thought process. Probably more indicative of racist tones, and stereotypical bigotry to ask for the Iron Fist character to be Asian.

Right, because then you’re just shoehorning him in — “Oh, this guy already knows Kung-Fu so he should be Asian”.

Exactly! Like, how stereotypical is that!? “Oh, we’ve gotta make the kung-fu guy Asian! C’mon! It’s racist if he’s not Asian!” No, man. It’s racist if he IS Asian! Like… why not make someone else Asian? Why not have an Asian Daredevil? That would be interesting because Daredevil isn’t defined by his race, but Danny’s origin depends on him not being Asian. You could make Iron Fist black or Latino, that could work, but you can’t make him Asian, because then he’s no longer foreign. He would thematically be returning to his motherland. Returning to his country. That’s how you’d perceive it as an audience member. It makes me feel weird when there’s outrage about him not being Asian. That’s more bigoted than…

What you think is bigoted.

Yeah! That’s crazy. Especially because there’s this great character, Shang-Chi. But I guess he doesn’t have a TV series, so… Why not make a campaign to make Jessica, what’s her name… the Alias girl…

Jessica Jones?

Jessica Jones! Why can’t she be Asian? There are a ton of characters you could change.

That, and also, in a world where you can literally create anything, just make a new character. Make him cool, relevant, smart and attached to people. You don’t have to take away from existing characters. Because of Mutants and Inhumans there’s a new hero every 10 minutes ostensibly.

Totally, totally. The internet rage is misplaced in this instance.

You mentioned the TV show. Has there been any kind of mandate from Marvel to make this an origin story or was this always the story you wanted to tell?

No, what’s been so great about it is I started the book; I can’t remember how far ahead I was, but I had my storyline approved, it was pitched and no big changes really. I had already started drawing it and I don’t know how far along it was before I even found out there was going to be a Netflix TV show. It was very fortuitous. If that deal with Netflix had happened sooner there probably would’ve been a conversation a would’ve had to have, and maybe I wouldn’t even do the book. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so interested. I don’t do good work when I’m constrained and caged creatively.

It’s amazing that my story had a momentum of its own that couldn’t be influenced by the Netflix show. I think a Netflix show is cool, I’m excited to see what it turns out to be but it probably won’t be my story.

Well, that, and you already have a much higher budget; you can do whatever the fuck you want in your Iron Fist story, right?

Exactly! If I was doing the Iron Fist show, I would approach it like “Let’s to the Fraction/Brubaker/Aja stuff”. That feels like a show, very serialized already. It’s got the classic tournament. That’s what I would do. I look at my book as the other version. It’s the version you could read while enjoying the show and be curious about a different take. I feel like mine’s the film version. I feel like there’s higher stakes, it’s got not just plotting device stakes, but higher emotional stakes. The characters are in more dire straits in more of a feature way than a series would be able to handle. Unless that series were like True Detective or something.

I don’t want to keep you much longer, but I have a couple quick fire questions. What is your favorite film?

Oh, god. Well, my go to answer is always the first Terminator movie. I saw it when I was a kid. It was one of the first films that I remember watching and I saw it on my buddy’s kitchen. He had a VHS and he could steal movies from a satellite. I had heard nothing about it, I was too young, knew nothing of it, and then all of a sudden there’s this robot skeleton crushing skulls and shooting people in the face. And it was so adult and graphic and violent, but so much spectacle and imagination, and the science fiction stuff. It was totally a movie I instantly connected to. I saw it at just the right time as a kid to be at that point where my imagination was running wild and the adult world was a little far away for me but a movie like this felt so exotic. So much violence and death and mayhem on screen.

You liking horror makes a lot more sense since you said T1 instead of T2. T1 is very much Friday the 13th with a terrifying robot.

Yeah! It’s a slasher movie with a science fiction element. When Terminator 2 came out, yeah, I also liked that, but it was more of a popcorn movie. Definitely that first one was one of my favorites.

Favorite comic book character?

It always will be Spider-man. That’s the character I grew up reading and loving and watching on TV and wearing his underwear and playing with his toys. He represents so much to me about my childhood and my life and all that. I could never separate him from my life. He will always be my favorite character by default, regardless of what’s going on with him in current books and continuity or movies or whatever. He can survive a thousand bad movies. I haven’t seen the new one. I hope it’s ok. He’ll survive beyond that movie.

Is there any DC character you’d like to work on?

Batman. For. Sure. I have one Batman story. I actually almost did a Batman story. Right after Spider-man Reign I had this offer to do a Batman book, to write and draw. I wrote a document and totally scared them away. It was too dark for them. It was too scary. This is the cool thing about working with Marvel and working with Axel [Alonso]. He’s never scared away by my crazy ideas or how dark I want to take things. He’s always been totally supportive and totally gets it. We’ve always worked so well together, My first and only experience with DC had them completely terrified of what I wanted to do and it didn’t work out. And this is Batman! It’s not like I was “Oh, I wanna put Superman into some crazy situation”, Batman is a dark character. It was going to be an out of continuity story so they didn’t have to worry about how crazy I wanted to get but it was too much for them.

Hahahaha, ‘Oh, this story is too much for you? The character who, as a child saw his parents murdered right in front of his eyes?’.

Right? The other thing was that specific story was very timely. It dealt with Batman in his world and his rogue gallery of villains, but it did so in a way that really paralleled how the Iraq war was happening at the time. Not in a direct way, not in a literal way, you wouldn’t be able to say “Oh, this is a parable about the Iraq war and it’s preachy!” But I took a lot of inspiration about how the world was treating its enemies as allies to hunt what one group who was labeled as terrorists with other groups who were labeled as terrorists, like, that to me was very interesting.

The ambiguity.

Right, the ambiguity between those lines of hero and villain and terrorist and ally. How it was becoming this big soup. It had to do with that, but it also took Batman back to his origins, again, I love going back to origins. Y’know, Batman used to wear purple gloves and shoot people. I didn’t have him doing that stuff, but, y’know, it was a little darker than what they were probably expecting.

Last question because our readers also play games — do you have a favorite video game?

Yes, I’ve always been a giant Halo nerd. It’s just that combination of first person shooting with sci-fi. Sometimes I feel a little weird about killing in Call of Duty where you’re shooting ‘real’ people with ‘real’ guns and it feels off to me. I can’t quite get the same thrill out of it as plasma-grenading an alien. Or even if it’s another dude but you’re jumping around in jetpacks and you have forcefields and then you get your energy sword and slice them in half. And also the physics. I love that idea. In a video game if it feels just like it does in real life I just don’t feel like it’s as interesting as in game where I can go beyond human capabilities. That’s fun for me. And also, I love sniping. I love all the Halo games.

Yeah, Halo Reach was the last game I played from start to finish; I was so wrapped up in that world.

To be honest I rarely finish the campaigns. I just am online. I’m very competitive. I like to fight other humans. I’ve gone on epic, epic battling-until-you’ve-got-blisters-on-your-thumbs binges. I have actually put my Xbox away while I work on this book. There’s no danger of getting distracted. Everything is focused on this one singular project.

Hahahaha, well, I’m sure Axel is reading this and happy to hear —

Axel is actually a huge gamer. I don’t know if you know this but he loves video games more than I do. He’s always playing. I’m sure he’s more into the sports games because he’s a huge basketball guy.

Oh, I just mean in terms of scheduling for the book, I’m sure he’d be happy to read that you’re focused on the book.

Oh, ha, totally! I always remember reading when Joe Mad [Madureira] was very open with how part of the reason he was late with books, maybe this wasn’t what happened but just how I remember it, he was late with his books because he was really into the new Final Fantasy. And I think I was just a fan back then but I remember thinking “Really?” That’s not even a secret? You’re just playing this game so much you can’t get your book out on time? That’s not good.

Right, but then you see his more recent works and you’re like ‘Oh, I can’t definitely see the Final Fantasy influences’.

Oh, totally, right? What I think is so funny is I’ve always liked his stuff, it’s cool, it’s great when he draws comics. He’s always brought that kind of Capcom-esqe video game flavor to comics. And then when he stepped away and did video games for a while you’d think it was cool but it seemed less unique in the video game world. It seemed more video game. I think he had less to offer the other way. He has more to offer by bringing the video games to comics than comics to video games if that makes sense.

This wasn’t on my list but I’m so excited to talk about this now, last question, I promise. Is there any licensed franchise you would like to tackle in comic form or film? Talking about your love of Halo. Video games, films whatever.

Hmmm… I don’t know. I mean, the tricky thing about games, and this is my own opinion, but I think part of the reason it’s so hard to translate a game experience into a successful movie or a successful comic book is because so much of the pleasure of gaming is you making choices and affecting the world around you. So when you take the most interesting part about a game away and someone is telling you about some other character making choices, instantly, a majority of those franchises fall apart in another medium. It sometimes can work.

I’m sure there is… let me think of an answer for you. Well… huh. I mean, having just said that, I think it would be really fun to do a Halo movie. There was the web-series that I didn’t really dig. The adaptations that have come out so far haven’t really been my cup of tea. When you look at Halo, it’s always been an amalgamation in my mind of Starship Troopers, and Aliens and you can really see it came from those movies, and those have always been some of my favorites…

Strike that. No. No. Because it’s been done. It came from those movies so it doesn’t make sense to bring it back. It doesn’t feel new.

How about this. Revenge of the Ninja. This, like, 1985 action movie starring Shô Kosugi. I used to love ninja movies as a kid. Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja Through the Domination, Pray for Death, Rage of Honor, all these ninja movies, I used to just devour with my brothers. It would be so much fun to just do a straight up ninja comic book.

I guess that’s why I have ninjas in Iron Fist. Mine were undead. But what better way to make them more interesting than by having them undead, right?

Really quick, issue 2 hits shelves and digital May 7th. Any teases you’d like to give about that?

Well, things are going to get worse. I love taking my characters and punishing them. I love watching my characters break and then finding out what happens after that. So, the journey of Danny has only just begun. It’s going to get tougher, and rougher, and bloody. Again, he chose death over life, and he’s going to see a lot of it.

Regenerating health not only killed the tension players feel as they advance down a corridor, but it created a sense of invulnerability in the player that's prevalent throughout most games being developed today.

Finite health encouraged a level of trepidation with the player that taught them running haywire and shooting every corner of the screen may not be the best angle of approach. It was a discipline that actively made the player avoid confrontations and propagated a sense of fear and dread as they wondered "can I survive the next skirmish?" It functionally made the player fear the possibility of death.

When Halo popularized regenerating health to compensate for the learning curve in a new input method (yes, young ones, there was a time when dual analog sticks were new and hard to work), developers took that idea to heart and by-and-large changed the gaming landscape.

Something was lost though; you could recklessly (and feasibly) kill 1, 2, 300 enemies while taking bullets but never really suffer any sort of sanction. Player death was reinforcement that a particular tactic wasn't working. It put value on the player doing their best to stay alive and limited the rate at which you could extinguish enemies, which, let's not forget, served as representations of people.

Violence became cartoonish as a side effect. Death meant less, and killing became easier.

Recently, thanks to the advent and proliferation of high definition graphics, players were given a new reason to fear death and violence. Health still regenerated, but gorgeous, near life-like renditions of people gave you a new reason to care. Can you spot the difference between the two images below?

Enhanced graphics have made certain depictions of violence gut-wrenching to watch. Mario's arms thrown up in the air like "Whelp, we'll get 'em next time!" conveys a completely different tone than Lara getting impaled by a spear. The borderline-unbearable portrayal of violence encourages gamers to play cautiously and thoughtfully. I personally had to put the controller down during the river-slide scene in Tomb Raider after my third time failing it. I couldn't stomach the screen of Lara's body going limp and then becoming subject to the water's current.

The discussion about whether IGN didn't make a death montage because she was a woman left me baffled. It shouldn't make you uncomfortable because she's a woman, it should make you uncomfortable because she's a person. She's Lara Croft-- the only one in that game with the ability to change her and her friends situation, ostensibly the most powerful figure in that self-contained universe the developers created for you-- she's going to be fine. Crystal Dynamics wasn't telling a story to her, they were telling a story to you, the gamer, through her.

Caleb baked the cookies perfectly when he said [and I'm paraphrasing him here:] 'the context in which the game was presented made the deaths painful to watch.' It's presented realistically in a desperate setting where the most immediate danger is a person who will do everything he can to kill you. Not a zombie or an alien. Or, y'know, an agitated mushroom.

When games downplay just how atrocious violence is, it trivializes the act. It's impressive to have a 9 K/D ratio in Call of Duty: Ghosts to be sure, but at the same time you get that score because you're killing nine times as many people as you-yourself are killed. They're digital representations, so no one's really hurt, but the lack of gravity that could potentially be imparted on the player is astounding. Taking it seriously isn't a bad thing, or at least having a vague understanding of what you're doing on a representative level most certainly isn't.

To use a film metaphor-- Steven Spielberg directed both Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade as well as Saving Private Ryan. Both are movies with high body counts, but the fact that you never really see the violence the same way makes them completely different tonally. One was pulp-fun about idealisms of good vs. evil, while the other maintained that as a central theme but also depicted the horrors of World War II.

"One of the responsibilities of art is to actually show this is what it looks like when someone gets shot, because it’s really obfuscated...War is about sending pieces of metal very fast at people and tearing them to bits on the most primal level.” - Ken Levine

Ken Levine wants to make his games more violent to accurately portray death and murder as uncomfortable subjects. The risk is when games like BioShock Infinite or Spec Ops: The Line decide to make a statement, will the gamer get it? Will players shudder as they see the most realistic portrayal of something that represents them cut to ribbons by shrapnel, or when the only influence you have is to inflict the same on a realized world? Or will said violence simply be seen as "cool", or "gross", or "gnarly"? Levine is challenging the players the best he can, but it's up to them to realize they're learning something.

A truly "mature" game doesn't trivialize death or killing. It shows why it's a horror; why life is precious and should be valued more than as a statistic on a menu screen.

Please don't think I'm saying violence in video games spurs violence in real life. I don't believe that and I haven't written that. But should violence should be presented so wantonly? Give it weight, give it meaning. Challenge me to not barge in lay waste to everyone I see; give me a reason to care about taking a life or losing one. Give me moral subjectivity that provokes me to make a decision that'll stick with me after I turn off my system. The medium is called video games so there should be fun oozing out of the experience, but taking the subject seriously can become a way to inform the player.

If you played through Spec Ops: The Line thinking it was a "bro-shooter", I'm sorry, but you missed the point only completely and should play it again. If all you gleaned from BioShock Infinite was that it's fun to throw crows at people you missed that point only completely too. There's a depth present in so many games if you have the resolve to ask why a certain thing was so meticulously presented to you but you have to ask it-- why? Keep in mind the game you're playing was once a blank file. Now it's a character, a story, a system of contextualized physics, a world, a universe, a place that only you can affect.

Early this morning, President of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida posted this tweet.

If the Shu fits then don't put a sock in it.

Sites like gamesradar took it negatively. I didn't. I think it's actually very encouraging and smart as hell to boot.

Selling just under 2 million units in Japan, it's clear that Microsoft never was, nor will likely ever be a contender in the Japanese market. For whatever reason, their systems have historically sold poorly there, and the gaming masses have always gravitated towards Sony, Nintendo or both. Due to sluggish Wii-U sales, and the aforementioned (basically) non-existent Xbox sales, the PlayStation 4 was poised to be the dominant home console in Japan. Supply chains though have forced Sony into somewhat of a stalemate: they can either launch in their home country where they'll most likely succeed in terms of market share regardless, or they can flex their muscles in the contested markets of Europe and North America after strong showings and consumer response at GamesCom and E3 respectively. Advantage, Nintendo.

Nintendo is gearing up their releases for the Western holiday season with games like Pokémon X/Y, A Link Between Worlds, Mario Party Island Tour, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World, Wii Party U, and Wii Fit U just for first party releases. With only 1.01 million Wii U's sold in Japan as of 6/30, and no direct competition from the PlayStation 4, Nintendo would seem to have Japan all to itself (given that not a lot of those games require intensive translation, if any into Japanese at all).

Make no mistake; this thing will SELL.

But then last week Sony dropped a bomb, one measuring 6.5x10x1.3 centimeters. The VitaTV is a set-top streaming box that plays Vita, PSP, PS One classics, streams digital subscription service based content and has the promised ability to stream playstation four games. It's important to note that Vita games would be playable with Dualshock 3, the controller from the PlayStation 3. All of this at 9,954 Yen, or around $100. For price comparisons, the Wii-U costs 30,000 Yen, the 3DS XL will cost 18,900 Yen, and the basic 3DS model will be around 14,000 Yen (according to amazon.co.jp).

Advantage, Sony.

With one announcement that NOBODY saw coming, Sony was singlehandedly able to undercut its only competition in the region, and give themselves more than a fighting chance when people would be flocking to the stores to pick up what was originally thought to be the only gaming entertainment available in the fall. This is purely Sony slapping the sandwich out of Nintendo's hand. It's like in Short Circuit 2 when Johnny Five is going after the fat white guy who isn't his friend and then dies for a few minutes before becoming a US Citizen. It's EXACTLY like that.

Why isn't Sony announcing this product for the West yet? Because, honestly, they don't have to. They're putting all their eggs into the European and NA markets and they needed something to sell this fiscal quarter in Japan. It's not launching new hardware, it's taking all the expensive features of the Vita out of the equation and simplifying it to its basic status as a 'hardcore' game platform. Sony has repositioned itself as both a company with bite and a company with something to offer; now the Japanese consumer market has a choice. And while no one would deny the attractiveness of the first Pokémon game on a new platform (make no mistake, if game sales could work in a fantasy football type simulation, that would've gone first round in the draft), Sony is providing uncompromising value to a platform that was admittedly struggling with all its bells and whistles. By cutting the fat and providing it at a price point at least half as expensive as their direct competitor in the market, Sony is sitting in a pretty good position going into fiscal Q3. Persona 4 Golden can now be played on your TV with a traditional controller. And Afterwards you can stream Cheers through Netflix. And you should. Because it's a great TV show.

I read Shu's tweet optimistically, unlike gamesradar, because Sony needs the markets its releasing the PlayStation 4 in. They're gritting their teeth where they need to and offering a pretty nifty little entertainment device in a region that has tons of games, but hasn't quite moved the hardware to capitalize on the volume of software available. The VitaTV is a cheap alternative that's attractive to home and portable console gamers alike. If it revitalizes the game sales of Vita effectively in the East, what reason would they have not to bring it to the West? If anything, its to our advantage; It will release after PlayStation 4 and the streaming technology is detailed, after games have been patched to work with Dualshock 3, and hopefully closer to a Gaikai streaming plan that could essentially turn the box into a PlayStation 3 to boot.

As we segue from one console generation to the next, it's easy to get excited about brand new features. Whether it's the idea of instant game recording/streaming, cloud computing, or game sharing, it's a future worth being optimistic about. That being said though, this current console generation has seen some truly innovative features that have now become mainstream, if not mandatory in a majority of game releases. These are the trendsetters, the shakers, and the movers that have shaped our gaming landscape over the course of the last seven years.

(Honorable Mention) Cross Game Saves- While not as prevalent as it should be amongst games with expected sequels, the notion that your decisions and outcomes in one game affect the next is pure genius and truly something that should be utilized more. The ability in Mass Effect truly changed the outcome (quit crying, naysayers, it's been a year) by the time the trilogy came to an end. InFamous used this as well, letting the moral implications in the first game dictate the worlds perception of you in its sequel. This highly detailed feature is unique to this generation and amazing in that it lets you shape your own story. Did Mordin die on your suicide mission against the Collectors in Mass Effect 2? Too bad, he would've been helpful in synthesizing a cure for the genophage and getting Krogan assistance against the Reapers in Mass Effect 3. Le whoops.

11. Modern War Shooters- Coming off of the Playstation 2/Xbox/GameCube generation, most shooters were focused on World War II. First popularized by what would later become Infinity Ward, Medal of Honor Allied Assault was a gamechanger in the shooter genre. Spawning the beginnings of the Call of Duty franchise, Brothers in Arms, a revived Castle Wolfenstein, and Battlefield 1942, the most popular games had people stabbin' nazis. There were a few exceptions of course (Half Life, Halo, and Rainbow Six Vegas being the biggest), but the paradigm shift from World War II to the modern era was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a game that as of 2009 had sold over 13 million copies. Its blockbuster success made modern times the setting of choice for shooters, and started the rampaging success we know today as Call of Duty. Cue Battlefield Bad Company/3/4, Homefront, Medal of Honor, MAG, Spec Ops: The Line and countless others. Now something stands out because it's not a modern times first person shooter, but there's no denying how many consoles the switch from World War II to World War Now encouraged.

Yeah, this changed everything.

10. Always/Online play- Back when you were able to convince your parents a Playstation 2 was a good purchase because it was also a cheap(er) DVD player, it was almost impossible to imagine the the impending boom that online capable consoles would bring. While the opening salvo of online gameplay started with Halo 2 on the original Xbox, this current generation sees online features as mandatory. Taking things a step further than the ability to connect to the internet, are games with a mandatory connection. Diablo 3, SimCity, MAG, SOCOM Confrontation, all these games were built around the idea that there would be a constant community there behind you to compete and cooperate with. While frustrating when servers are stressed, these games can prove to be ultimately rewarding given the requirement of communication and even a basic understanding of empathy between users.

9. Free To Play Model- Improved technology such as a constant internet connection led to micro-transactions; sure, companies could sell you a game once, but why not always have a window open where the devs could exchange game goods for cash with users? Smite, League of Legends, Team Fortress 2, DOTA 2, DC Universe Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Uncharted 3's Multiplayer, Dust 514 and a bevy of other games have shirked the traditional one time purchase model in favor of something with infinite potential for profit. It's a genius move, and one you're absolutely going to see more of as we move forward.

8. Prevalence of Indie- As game budgets rise and rise thanks to new technology and the itch to create more immersive worlds, smaller games have been left by the wayside. Until they decided to go a different route. With affinity and appreciation for alternative art styles, gameplay mechanics, storytelling presentation, and user consumption, smaller studios are able to compete for the same shelf space that bigger AAA games are aiming for. Minecraft is the obvious go to name in terms of popular titles, but there's a litany of others; Spelunky, Terraria, Rochard, Bastion, Thomas Was Alone, Gone Home, and uncountable others. More than padding out the dates between releases from major publishers, Indie games are often held in as high, if not higher, regard than their bigger-budgeted kin. Digital distribution lowers the overhead and actually increases the amount of potential consumers, supporting the model of smaller teams without the need for a major publisher.

7. Playstation Plus/Games for Gold/Subscription Services- While Xbox Live set the standard for online services, and still arguably provides the better product, Playstation Plus was a totally new approach to online interaction between company and consumer. Instead of paying $50 a year to connect to multiplayer services (a free feature on Sony's Playstation console), Playstation Plus instead focused on selling games. Not just offering games at steep discounts, occasionally a week early, and early beta access, Playstation Plus also gives payers a number of games free per month. Akin to Netflix, the games only exist in your library as you pay. The subscription model is obviously a success, and a huge deal to the consumers. Personally, I wouldn't have been able to play Saints Row: The Third, Sleeping Dogs, Vanquish, XCOM, Deus Ex: Human Revolution without it. Those titles barely scratch the surface of free games attributed to the service. Microsoft recently took a feather from Sony's cap and began offering Games for Gold, a similar program that offers free games for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. The idea of games as a service is novel one, and one you're absolutely going to see going forward. Sony recently announced that a version of Drive Club will be made available for Playstation Plus subscribers on their next generation device, as well as Housemarque's ResoGun; they're giving you launch games for free.

6. Decline of the Mascot...- Games in the 90's were dominated by character association. Nintendo sold their consoles because of Mario, Sega sold theirs because of Sonic, Sony because of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, and so on. Recent years though, mascots have fallen by the wayside. Save for Nintendo, which, is in its own weird universe right now. Uncharted has Drake, there was a Sly Cooper game this year, a God of War game, Microsoft will always have Master Chief, and Sweet Tooth came back last year in Twisted Metal's revival, but, by and large, the idea of protagonist association with a game has gone away in favor of...

5. ...Rise of Brand- Call of Duty has no one single protagonist. The entire game is built around its multiplayer suite, where users are able to customize their character to stand out from the crowd. FIFA, Madden, NHL, and NBA Live dominate online servers and sell through the roof annually. Far Cry 3's protagonist, your character, isn't even featured on the cover. Tomb Raider's recent reboot ditched having "Lara Croft" in the title, and Bioshock had the iconic enemy Big Daddy on its front. To carry Bioshock further, Booker DeWitt was on the cover of this years Bioshock Infinite, but people didn't buy it because they wanted to 'be Booker DeWitt', they bought it because of the well deserved prestige associated with the Bioshock branding. Franchises now are built around anonymity, allowing players to visualize themselves in that situation, rather than a mascot presence.

4. Not just a console- People expecting their Super Nintendo to do anything more than play Super Nintendo cartridges would've been called crazy, but the idea of buying a console now that only plays games is impressively even more ludicrous. Just playing games today isn't enough. Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, NFL Sunday Ticket, HBO Go, CrunchyRoll, and many other services are now expected of home gaming consoles on top of the technology necessary to play cutting edge video game experiences. The existence of these boxes that even don't play games are becoming more prevalent. AppleTV, Roku, and even Smart TV's are technologies that challenge the consumer to ask for more from their products.

Yes, this matters now. Sorry.

3. Achievements/trophies- The inclusion of Achievements on the Xbox 360 and later Trophies on the Playstation 3 introduced a new layer to gaming by presenting a meta-game on top of whatever software you happened to be playing. Actions in-game correspond to a note on the account you're playing the game on, and are displayed to fellow users. Finding all hidden treasures in a game no longer just meant seeing 100% on a save stat only people immediately viewing the screen to see, but instead acted as a badge on your profile, letting the world know that you put in the effort to get it. It's the modern equivalent of a high score at a local arcade cabinet except readily available to curious eyes. It sparks challenge and competition amongst users and encourages users to stick around even after they've completed the campaign or spent hours online with multiplayer. I've poured countless hours more into games I shouldn't have (I'm looking at you, Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale) just for the trophies... Sadly.

2. Cinematic presentation- The attempt to be cutting edge required game developers to push themselves harder to create a more compelling game environment. The first time most people heard of motion-capture was probably with Andy Serkis' role as Golem in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but shortly after was brought over to the games medium. Uncharted, LA Noire, Splinter Cell, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and now even InFamous are pushing for more realism in their games by upping the ante in terms of presentation. The improved animations introduce a more fluid movement to the characters lending a more natural experience to things that are essentially just 0's and 1's. While games like Half Life 2 and Halo came before and presented convincing animations, technology today presents an unprecedented ability to capture the movement of professional actors and translate that into gameplay.

1. Introduction of HD Graphics- Easily the biggest change introduced this generation, high definition graphics were a huge leap forward. Lighting, sound, animation, interaction, even budgets completely changed due to the newly consumer friendly technology. Most people know about HDMI and component cables because of setting up either their Playstation 3 or Xbox 360. Games were crisper, had a bigger draw distance, new colors were seen, textures looked better, and things that shape perspective like anti-aliasing were all improved with the introduction of a new viewing experience and new hardware to take advantage of it. Details became important because you could finally see them on large, capable televisions.

Let's Tarantino this: last week I was drinking myself to oblivion in Europe, same as the two months before that. The second half of summer I was with family who don't have games. The beginning of summer I was working 4 jobs. Spring semester I was taking 18 credits, the most my university allows. The only games I've really played this year are on my DS or my PSP, and they're fun and all, but I'm home for Christmas now. With one month off, my flatscreen, my ps3, my xbox and my wii. I missed my home consoles. I missed them a lot. I love video games I just never have the time to play them. Let me break it down for you, so you can know just how busy I've been between school, work, relationships, family, and location/convenience...

Games I've beaten this year:

Mac- Star Wars: Empire at War

DS- Pokémon Soul Silver

PSP- God of Wars Chains of Olympus

PSP- Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow

PSP- GTA: Vice City Stories

XBox360- Halo: Reach

PS3- Borderlands (4x)

Games I've spent less than a half hour playing:

PS3- Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

PS3- GTA: Episodes From Liberty City

Wii- Metroid Other M

Games I've spent less than one hour playing:

PS3- Final Fantasy XIII

PS3- Red Dead Redemption

PS3- The Saboteur

PS3- Infamous

PS3: God of War III

PS3- Assassin's Creed

Games I haven't started:

Wii- Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition

Wii- The Conduit

Wii- MadWorld

Wii- De Blob

XBox360- Splinter Cell Conviction

PS3- Mobile Suit Gundam Crossfire

PS3 - Aliens VS. Predator

PS3- Fracture

PS3- Bioshock

PS3- The Godfather II

Games I own and haven't played, want to play, but know I cannot possibly finish in the time I have:

PS3- Dragon Age: Origins

Games I own but want to sell back before I get too invested in the story as they're about to be released on a better console, and would actually be a great way to spend my summer especially considering they scaled down the planet mining minigame and are making it run on the third games engine:

XBox360- Mass Effect 2

I have a month before I go back to England. And I have all those games. You know what this means right?